In Class – Social Awareness Campaigns

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By Alex Lustig | Thursday, 04 May 2017

Centro Mundolengua – Social Awareness Campaigns

A teacher of mine at my university once said that he never wanted students’ classwork to be meaningless. His goal was to create a class structure where the work would live after the students submitted projects and assignments. He did this by keeping projects from other semesters and showing them to newer students who wanted to learn more about a particular topic. This was an idea that resonated with me; too often, students do homework and it goes into a black hole where it is never seen again.

In the HISP399 class titled “Sevilla and the community: approaching social problems through volunteering“, students in groups of three had to create a social awareness campaign on some social issue. It could take the form of a short, a video, an advertisement, etc. They had to prepare the campaign and prepare a ten minute presentation showing the material they had prepared. They also had to explain why they chose their theme and how they would carry out the campaign if it were real. When María De La Torre, one of Centro Mundolengua‘s amazing Spanish professors, told me that the university students of Centro Mundolengua made social awareness campaigns in Spanish, I was excited to write a blog post and give their work a life outside of the classroom. This blog details the campaigns from the four groups and takes an in-depth look at their material.

This campaign was about homeless people in Spain. They wanted to inform the population on this issue and prepared pamphlets with information on this problem along with some resources for both those who were homeless and people who would like to help. They also prepared a song which they sang in the class. Their campaign idea was to hand out leaflets (see below) on the street as they sing the song to get more attention from the people. They also planned to get momentum behind hashtag #SevillaNuestroHogar, which means “our home Seville”.

Group 2 – Erica, Taylor, John

These three students talked about sexism in the press. For this they prepared a video to show the double standards with which men and women are treated in the press. Screenshots of news chyrons and headlines helped to illustrate their point. If this campaign were real, it would be broadcasted on television and on social networks.

The theme of their social awareness campaign was the prevention of gender violence. They focused on raising awareness that the abuser (or potential abuser) needs help before committing an aggression not only when they are already in prison. For this, they created a free and anonymous telephone number (017) similar to the one that exists for women (016) along with the hashtag #BuscaLaRaiz which means “look for the root”. To give diffusion they prepared a video that could be shown in television and social networks. In addition, they prepared a poster that could be broadcasted on social networks and displayed in cities, which can be seen below. By putting them on walls and in school centers, violence could be prevented among teenagers and young people.

Group 4 – Rebecca, Lawrence, Cory

This group prepared an anti-tobacco campaign to raise awareness of the risks children face as passive smokers. It focused mainly on raising awareness of fathers and mothers. They created a poster that could be placed anywhere where adults would see it such as streets, work centers, hospitals, government administrative buildings, etc. They created a posted to show the effects of secondhand smoke on adults and thus emphasize the importance of preventing this smoke from coming in contact with children.

Overall, the socialawareness campaigns were highly detailed and purposeful. We love seeing our students putting their time and effort into meaningful projects such as these. Students went above and beyond and created social awareness campaigns which were truly special.